Monthly Featured Broadcasts

[Glenn Anders]

Bravo, Terry!

I particularly enjoyed the episode illustrating "Shay's Rebellion," which contains the prescient line (paraphrased): "Citizens arise! We have been usurped by those who instigated mortgage foreclosures of our farms."

The more things change, the more they are the same, I suppose.

But it's interesting that Orson Welles, so early as 1941, was selecting this enduring prospect of incipient Capitalism's fly in the ointment for an American mass public audience.

But we never seem to listen, not even to geniuses. Thus, most of us since the death of Orson Welles, incidentally, have learned to rue this truth by watching much of our life savings diminished by financial false prophets.

Glenn

[NoFake]

Indeed! Wonder what Welles would have thought of Michael Moore (particularly his latest, CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY)?

[Store Hadji]

"Just because I don't get a laugh, you shouldn't try for one."

November's addition is another rarely-heard episode, this time from the Orson Welles Almanac series. Monty Woolley adds to hilarity, the Mercury all-star jazz band perform "Panama Rag," and Welles reads an assemblage of verses from 1st Corinthians.

OW Almanac - Monty Woolley (4-12-44)

[Magentarose67]

What a wonderful collection! Store Hadji, thank you so much for your wonderful contributions to us Welles fans at the Museum of OW. It is indeed a treasure of goodies !

[Steve Kostelecky]

Thanks Store Hadji. You are an invaluable resource and your work and generosity are much appreciated. (Which sounds suspiciously like a fortune cookie from Panda Express, but is meant sincerely.)

[Store Hadji]

Everyone continues to be very welcome, in word and in deed.

December's addition is part two of Escape, by John Galsworthy (best remembered as author of The Forsyte Saga.) Welles stars as Capt. Matt Denant, and my ears detect the presence of those great radio voices Eustace Wyatt, Agnes Moorehead and Edgar Barrier. Music is by Bernard Herrmann. I haven't found part one, but at least we get a synopsis of it and the conclusion of the story. Restoration consisted of removing the 60 Hz mains hum and its harmonics and equalization to reduce tape hiss.

It can be found towards the top of the museum page.

[Magentarose67]

Everyone continues to be very welcome, in word and in deed.

December's addition is part two of Escape, by John Galsworthy (best remembered as author of The Forsyte Saga.) Welles stars as Capt. Matt Denant, and my ears detect the presence of those great radio voices Eustace Wyatt, Agnes Moorehead and Edgar Barrier. Music is by Bernard Herrmann. I haven't found part one, but at least we get a synopsis of it and the conclusion of the story. Restoration consisted of removing the 60 Hz mains hum and its harmonics and equalization to reduce tape hiss.

It can be found towards the top of the museum page.

Yessss! More Orson for my I-Pod !

Those are great ! Thanks a ton for posting!

[Alan Brody]

That George Washington program is terrific. Would make a great companion piece to the Campbell show of Rabble in Arms, where Welles plays Benedict Arnold!

I like the Monty Wooley Almanac show too, but I do think the Almanac series was the weak link in Welles's radio career. It's almost painful to listen to Welles falling flat on his face so often with his attempted ad-libs, and that New Testament reading at the end goes on far too long, but there are a few good exchanges with Woolley. Anyone know whatever happened to that TV special Welles did of The Man Who Came to Dinner in the 70's? I wonder if we'll ever see it on video.

[Store Hadji]

This month's addition is a 1943 episode of Radio Reader's Digest, with Welles reading the wartime poem "High Flight."

I also found an upgrade of "We Hold These Truths" and new links for Welles' Shadow episodes (minus the several lost episodes which have gone on sale over the past year.)

Find them on the museum page.

[Magentarose67]

Store Hadji, I was wondering if you know what it is wrong with the Museum of Orson Welles blog. It doesn't seem to be working ...

[Store Hadji]

February's addition, thanks to mteal, is an episode of Treasury Star Parade featuring the wartime poem "Ballad of Bataan." Welles' performance is a bit over-the-top and fairly racist, but that's understandable given that this was the one-year anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I reduced the surface noise, but it's still a little crackly.

Ballad of Bataan (12-7-42)

The Shadow links look fine to me and the museum page is alive and well.

[Steve Kostelecky]

Can't begin to thank you enough, Store Hadji, for creating a comprehensive resource for OW's radio work. It is invaluable.

[RayKelly]

Anyone know whatever happened to that TV special Welles did of The Man Who Came to Dinner in the 70's? I wonder if we'll ever see it on video.

Hallmark (Hall of Fame) owns it. I spoke with their marketing department last year and they have no plans at present to release some of their early classic programs on DVD. Dinner, shown in 1972, was their 101st program. They are past 230 now. Some Hallmark titles, beginning with Secret Garden in 1987, are available at their Hallmark Golden Crown card stores

[Glenn Anders]

Speaking of "The Monthly Featured Broadcasts" and THE MUSEUM OF ORSON WELLES (Radio Division), is any chance available in cyberspace that these resources might return to Wellesnet.com? They provided an invaluable archive, and a real draw for new members unfamiliar with the incredible scope of Welles' contribution to the Radio medium, by far his most prolific, relevant, and, in some ways, most successful of enterprises.

To this relevance, I might report that, yesterday, Glenn Beck, the sorry successor of Welles ON our radio networks, the American counterpart of Franz Kindler, announced to his ever-growing horde of Tea Party followers, "the Third Largest Radio Talk Show Audience in the United States," that he was speaking to them from Rockefeller Center. In fact, he said, he was using the very microphone which Orson Welles used to alarm the Citizenry in 1938 of the coming of "The Little Green Men" to America. Beck identifies these "Green Men" now as "the progressives" (actually, any individual or group which Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey or Andrew Breitbart identifies as being effective enough enemies of "corporatism" in need of being knocked off). Beck exhorted his Tea Party people and 8-28's (a new development since last we met) "to do something," to at least get out and vote "Nancy Pelosi and the socialists" from power.

Our move to the Right continues, I'm afraid, as Orson Welles feared it would in THE STRANGER.

[tonyw]

Yes, I second that. We need THE MUSEUM back here (although I think they can be accessed elsewhere. These radio programs are important aspects of Welles's diverse creativity and an aesthetic and political contrast to what goes on today.